A new series now showing on Sky Atlantic  seemed a natural for pitch afficionadoes! This is how it was described on Wikipedia: “The Pitch is an unscripted series from AMC that goes behind the scenes on the pressure on America’s top creative ad agencies competing to pitch a new account. Each week the two agencies go head-to-head in a presentation known as The Pitch, with only seven days to prepare.”

It disappoints. It is not really about pitching at all. It is the latest in a longish line of programmes that tries to capture the ‘creative process in an ad agency’. Like most it fails.  Calling it The Pitch is little more than a dramatic  device to allow examination of the ‘process’ from two very different agencies.

One was the ‘nice guy’ agency- medium size, family, a touch of Southern gentility with a collegiate approach, a Sandra Locke look-a-like writer and a would-be, not look-alike, Don Draper. The other was the ‘tough guy’ agency from brash  LA where the tough guy boss  talked non-stop tough. Both agencies believed in awesome.

The ‘creative process’ got the usual brainstorming treatment, walls festooned with notes, lots of off-the-wall ideas and noisy group think. The reality is most campaign ideas are the product of the reflective time of individuals sitting quietly in an office. This  does not make entertaining television.  ( Susan Cain in Quiet “ The best ideas tend to come from individuals- often the introvert- working in solitude, a crucial ingredient of creativity.”  A quiet pitch…

Any good pitch needs a touch of theatre. This is as true of the informal cross-table discussion as it is of the larger set piece and while the theatre might be created by staging, or props or, hopefully, an idea, its success will depend on one thing. Did it make an emotional connection?

Given that the Greeks gave us theatre in the first place,  given the setting and given the 2,800 years of history, it was very sad that the torch lighting ceremony in Olympia was so lacking in emotion. It was not because the flame went out and had to be re-lit. Nor because the grass was worn or that the ‘virgins’ looked disinterested.

 What was lacking, and who can blame the Greeks, was dynamism, energy and the theatrical drama so evident in Athens.  For them this must be a bitter reminder of what was and is no longer. It was a pitch lacking emotion and this came across in the coverage.

Fortunately for London this lowkey start will be long forgotten by the time 8,000 inspirational torchbearers have carried the flame through over 1,000 cities, towns and villages. A whole lot of emotion will be going on!

In the Observer Review a week ago there was a profile interview with the ‘legendary’ French rock star Johnny Hallyday on the occasion of his 70th birthday. While a huge star in France he is one of many French singers who do not cut la moutarde outside that country.

In discussing his success he credited advice received from an even more legendary French legend, Maurice (’thank evan for leetle gerls..’) Chevalier. He said: “Look I don’t know if you’re going to be a great singer or not but you must always be careful with your entrance on stage and your exit. In the middle you do what you can. You try to sing.”

Pitch teams should note this advice. Most are so concerned with the content, the singing bit in the middle, that they overlook the first impression and the last, entering the stage and leaving it. Both these legends knew how to make an entrance and Chevalier, in particular, worried little about the singing and let his charm carry the day. Another useful French lesson.